Comments

On watching Overwatch League;
OW is a tough game for me to watch as an eSport. It is very fast, there is a lot of visual feedback, and it's difficult to identify a single player amidst the carnage.
Looking at Dota 2, and CS:GO which are two eSports that I love to watch competitive contests, these have very identifiable personalities playing very specific roles.
Another issue in eSports is that the teams do not stay put for more than five minutes. Dota actually had to enforce rules to counter the fact that members were swapping teams so much. This made it tough for fans to follow a team, as two months down the line, your fave players have gone.
I've been watching CS:GO for about a year, and in this time I have found a team (Virtus Pro) that I consistently enjoy watch play. Same in Dota 2 (Evil Geniuses).
Hopefully OWL with likewise enforce consistency with their teams, and their personalities can transcend the confusion on screen.

On topic, I’m totally with the Game King on early access. Watching the steady drip of updates and trying them out is one of the things I love about early access. It’s like getting a new game every week.

Once they’re released, I become less interested because that dopamine hit isn’t coming anymore.

I was ready to skip reading this, but on a whim decided to click through on my lunch hour. Worth it -mrtomaytohead

When video games simulate water really really well, no one thinks they are creating actual wetness. Why then when video games simulate consciousness really really well, will some people think they are creating actual consciousness?

When I played it, I never had the thought that "this is creating a new genre", because I was still in the mindset that computer games could be weird & experimental, and a lot of them simply didn't fit into genre descriptions.

It started off as Notch's fun little side project, but around the time it hit "Alpha" and started becoming a viable game, you were offered the chance to buy in and get access to all the updates during it's development cycle. I still have my Paypal receipt for $9.95 from 2010.

The "Collect and Build" cycle was cute, but what really made the experience were the random updates that would completely change the game. In the early days, most of the changes were unannounced, or only hinted at in the release notes. It felt like every time you logged in, you were given a new puzzle to hunt down somewhere in the game. Rumors would go around (Did you know if you built a 4x3 rectangular doorway out of Obsidian and lit it on fire, it would open a portal to Hell?) , and sometimes they were even true.

New monsters would just start appearing. Six months, and then there's a ten new block types, new recipes. New biomes to explore. Towns and Villagers and Shops. Magic. Experience. A quest to find "The End"

The whole thing got insanely popular and over commercialized, but it's now a part of culture. And to think, it all really took off because a couple fans saw something in a bored developer's side project, and stuck with it.

Shawn, since you get tired of deck builders because they often are multilayer solitaire, I wonder if you have played Clank? If I recall correctly, Julian loves it.

Sean, would you have exceeded 2,000 hours on EU IV if it did not have a major patch or expansion every few months and instead followed the old model of releasing roughly one expansion every year and only patching to fix bugs? It seems like Paradox is pretty much following the early-access model in application though not in name.

We had a neat discussion (continual discussion?) on Overwatch League on the Overwatch forum post. Picking a team seems a bit divided, but only so much for a person who can't identify with a local team. Several people who don't have a local team are interested in watching the games and deciding which players/teams to follow from there.

That being said,
GO FUSION!

And go Eagles!

"Goin' to the Labyrinth and he's..
Gonna get ra-a-a-gy,
Goin' to the Labyrinth and he's..
Gonna get ra-a-a-gy;
Gee he really loves to
Swing his..big long a-a-a-axe,
Goin' to the Labyrinth of Crete"
-bhchrist

When video games simulate water really really well, no one thinks they are creating actual wetness. Why then when video games simulate consciousness really really well, will some people think they are creating actual consciousness?

Because it's a natural facet of human psychology and language to attribute intent and character to things.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

You've never known true joy until you've shaken a lich stick at someone.

Seems like the obvious analogue to e-sports is automotive sports. I don't follow NASCAR or Formula One, but it's pretty clear that you market personalities and teams and hardware. There's no North Carolina Days of Thunder team out there. Seems to me like if you were serious about getting this off the ground, you'd have peripheral and video card makers not just sponsoring teams, but fielding them. Maybe that's already going on, I don't know. But I suspect that an Alienware team vs. the NVIDIA team would probably be a better bet at making a personal connection than sticking a bunch of kids in an apartment in Houston for a few months.

When video games simulate water really really well, no one thinks they are creating actual wetness. Why then when video games simulate consciousness really really well, will some people think they are creating actual consciousness?

Because it's a natural facet of human psychology and language to attribute intent and character to things.

Indeed. Pixar’s entire financial empire is built on that very fact.

I was ready to skip reading this, but on a whim decided to click through on my lunch hour. Worth it -mrtomaytohead

I have a question regarding the feed: I can only ever see the last 45 episodes. Is that intended? A technical problem on my end?

Device and podcast source? E.g. iPhone / Apple podcast app.

For performance reasons, mostly. All of the episodes are available here on the site but the RSS only refreshes the last 50 eps. We might be able to bump that up a bit, but I don't think it'll ever show hundreds.

“Respect is one of the great treasures of being human, ennobling us, and opening us to love that nourishes our basic humanity.” ~ Roshi Joan Halifax

Alright, thanks for your answer :-). So it's not a technical problem on my end.

It's only a little bit unfortunate because I only recently started to use an app (AntennaPod on Android) to track all the podcasts I listen to, but have been listening to the GWJ Conference Call for more than 3 years. So I can't mark the older ones as "played". A really insignificant problem. So no worries, I was just curious.

When video games simulate water really really well, no one thinks they are creating actual wetness. Why then when video games simulate consciousness really really well, will some people think they are creating actual consciousness?

Because it's a natural facet of human psychology and language to attribute intent and character to things.

The early access discussion was interesting. Sean's mentality is so foreign to me. I hate playing unfinished or janky games, in my head it is just like there are SO MANY games these days to play, why would ever play something that isn't done? Same thing with like alphas and betas. Permanent early access just sounds terrible.

After so many games being abandoned in early access, or the promises not being met, I never do early access any more (or Kickstarter for the same reason).

I am with Certis as to Gloomhaven being a fantastic coop game with a kid(s). It is also a very, very good solo game and I have heard good things from those who play with 3-4. A unique element for a quasi-legacy campaign game like this is the drop-in mechanic. The "Party" is fluid and not defined by the mercenaries themselves. It can vary in numbers and character. If a friend or family member wants to give it a try, you do not have to restart or reset the campaign at all. The fact that someone can join the party for a couple scenarios in an existing campaign without disrupting the core play group is so nice.

I would be very surprised if this isn't in Elysium's wheelhouse.

Battle.net ID: bhchrist#1556

"A kid friendly version of the Kama Sutra. With clowns. Probably not the most safe-for-work."--tanstaafl

"Goin' to the Labyrinth and he's..
Gonna get ra-a-a-gy,
Goin' to the Labyrinth and he's..
Gonna get ra-a-a-gy;
Gee he really loves to
Swing his..big long a-a-a-axe,
Goin' to the Labyrinth of Crete"
-bhchrist